Majority of bill not for natural gas

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While the price of natural gas will increase by a whopping 80 per cent come October, the average customer will actually only see a 12 per cent increase on their gas bill.

That's because much of the bill is made up of other charges, like delivery and storage.

FortisBC announced Monday the BC Utilities Commission had recently approved the increase, due to demand. The cost of gas will rise from $1.14 per gigajoule to $2.05 per gigajoule in October.

The price of gas only accounts for a small portion of a customer's gas bill.

“We do have a number of charges on the bill," said FortisBC spokesperson Michael Allison. “Quite a bit of it goes into running and managing a utility, that customers will definitely see on their bill.”

Customers pay the same price as FortisBC for the gas they use. Those other charges – which Allison says are needed to maintain service – make up the majority of the bill.

"For example, the basic charge; that's a flat daily fee that isn't connected to how much (natural gas) you use. If you're a customer, then that's the fee you'd be charged to be connected to our system,” he said.

“There's a delivery charge, and that pays for the cost of delivering gas to the system, maintenance, things like that. Storage and transport is the cost of bringing that gas down from the folks who develop it."